Prayer
/ Poetry /
- at Süleymaniye Mosque
Outside the barrier to the prayer hall, I get down
on my knees with the other women and listen
to the imam lead the prayer. I can’t tell if it’s music
or instructions. I fall into his rhythm and wipe my eyes
with my headscarf. Concentric rings of chandeliers
hang so low I could almost reach them. It’s only been
a few weeks and I am here, in ruins and existing.
A young woman kneels next to me and asks if I am ok,
that maybe I feel something and I say Yes because it is easier.
She translates the arabesque Allah high in the domes.
The many names for God. She asks What do you believe?
And I say I suppose I believe in nature, which is to say,
I hope for resilience. She studies my eyes. No one
can understand your pain except Allah. But I wonder
how a god could know grief without a body. She goes on
to say nature is an apple tree, is the seed and water
and soil of the apple and the tree. And us too, she says.
The apple is perfect, and we are perfect. Why, then,
does life build redundancies, I wonder. She asks
Where could all this come from but God?
I do not mean to argue, so I say, It’s all a mystery.
She asks What is the word mystery? We are speaking
through each other as if a veil circles our tongues.
I had believed life is a wheel with a million spokes
so that if one breaks, life still turns. This is not efficient
or exquisite. I didn’t know that it was possible
for too many spokes to break. We are quiet,
and then she says she wants to give all of herself
to Allah. I tell her I want to give myself to the apple tree,
to her, to the sun and waiting rain. I think we both want
to pour ourselves into something. Sometimes living
is a lonely church. I need to believe that to persist
is as communal as it is biological. No prayer is enough.
